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Homer

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Homer: Writer of Myths, or a Myth Himself
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Homer is one of the greatest names of ancient histories, the name behind the two greatest Greek epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey... but there is debate whether who was behind the name. Now it has been respected that it was a man named Homer alone, but that has been thrown about. Several theories say Homer was blind, and that he had a ghost writer write for him. Perhaps it was a group of men writing together under the same name. One of the the things that presents evidence that it is perhaps not one man, is the fact that the morals presented in the two tales are completely different. In The Iliad, blood-shed and sacking was resepcted, and the more you did of it, the more of a hero you were. Achilles was a hero out of killing like a crazed criminal, but he was resepected almost as a god. But in the Odyssey, Odysseus uses his wits, rather then brawn, and that sacking is only half of the talent needed, that intelligence will get a man further. But still, what if there was one man and that he wrote these tales at different points of times, perhaps Homer wrote The Iliad as a young man when he still saw war as the best alternative, and then when he grew older, he wrote The Odyssey knowing that war glory is true, but it will not save you in the later parts of your life, and that you need intellingence whne your strength is gone. Or perhaps he knew of the morals he wrote in The Odyssey and wanted to expand them further, and perhaps Odysseus was suppose to be like Nestor in the Iliad, an old man who is strong as ever, but has wits to match.

The Homeric Hymns
 The Homeric Hymns, on the otherhand, have had many controversy. Indeed, people don't know if it was Homer, whether one person, or many, who wrote them. They are written in a similar way that is signature to Homer, but these hymns were written at different times then that of The Iliad and The Odyssey, leading furhter to the belief that perhaps Homer is a name that used amongst a generation of poets and epic writers.